


Hugs and Besos

by Ninja_Librarian



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: As narrated by Lance's mom, Basically Lance's mom names him after a friend, Basically a whole bunch of headcanons smooshed together, But she loves him anyway, Gen, How Lance missed two weeks of the third grade, Lance Birthday Fic!, Lance is a smack-dab-in-the-middle child, Lance scares the crap out of his mother on a regular basis, Lance's childhood and family, She both regrets this decision and thinks it's one of the best she's ever made, Who does not get paid enough to put up with all the trouble Lance gets into, lance has ADHD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-06 20:31:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11608380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ninja_Librarian/pseuds/Ninja_Librarian
Summary: "Well, there's only one planet that has Varadero beach, pizza shack looking over the water and the garlic knots and... my mom's hugs..."She didn't believe a word the Garrison officials told her.After all, she knew her son better than they did.





	Hugs and Besos

They told her that her son ran away in the middle of the night.

She didn’t believe them.

They said that he cracked under the pressure, it was common at such an elite school.

She refused to listen.

They said that they were doing everything they could to find him, working with the local law enforcement.

She didn’t need a woman named Colleen Holt to call shortly after the Garrison officials left to know that something was very wrong, and that she had just been lied to.

And, deep down, she blamed herself for all of this madness.

If only, if only, if only…

If only there hadn’t been that rainy day when a semi collided head-on with her husband’s best friend’s car, killing him instantly.

If only she hadn’t sat beside her grieving husband as they flew to the United States within hours of the phone call, rushing back from their trip to visit family in Cuba, taking his hand and resting her other on her seven-months-pregnant belly.

If only she hadn’t given his hand a squeeze and opened her mouth and said,

“If it’s a boy… We’ll name him Lance.”

Beneath her hand, the baby kicked, as if expressing pleasure with the suggestion.

If only her husband hadn’t looked up at her with red-rimmed eyes, and given her the first smile since the call had come in, squeezed her hand back, and said,

“I like that idea. He would have loved it. He always talked about wanting us to name one of the kids after him.”

She hadn’t thought a thing of it, potentially naming her fifth child after that mischievous, adventurous friend whom she had loved just as much as her husband had. He had been one of her first friends in America, when she arrived in Florida to receive a college education, partnered together in a freshman class for a project. He had introduced her to her future husband, his best friend since kindergarten, who also had family back in Cuba like she did.

Lance Knight had quickly become her best friend, too.

But it was as if—once that suggestion was made, once it was agreed upon—she had doomed her child.

He arrived two weeks early, when his older siblings had all arrived on the exact due date the doctors had given. This labor was harder, longer than it had been for her four elder children. She couldn’t understand it, all of her other babies had been fast labors, even with the twins, and Maria being breech.

She should have wondered what she had done when she finally had her perfectly healthy baby against her chest, crying and laughing simultaneously.

It was a boy.

Less than a week later, the priest who had married her and her husband, who had baptized her four eldest children, looked down at the baby sleeping in her arms dressed all in white, then looked up at her. “Are you sure?” He asked, a small, playful smile in the corner of his mouth.

She nodded. It was what she had signed on the birth certificate, after all. Perhaps it wasn’t a traditional name for a Catholic baby, but in her mind there was no turning back.

The priest nodded and carefully took her baby out of her arms.

A few minutes later, her son was christened Lance Manuel Sanchez de McClain.

Later, she would wonder if, perhaps, out of all of her children, he needed that absolution of sin the most. Because from there on out… She wasn’t sure if her son went looking for trouble, or if trouble just kept looking for him.

Both, by the way. The answer was both.

Lance was probably her fussiest baby yet, but her mother had laughed at her when she said that and said, “No, he is just your most talkative, most vocal baby yet.”

She conceded that point around Lance’s first birthday, once he started figuring out words in both English and Spanish. It didn’t take too long and she suddenly had a baby happy babbling away in Spanglish. He loved playing with his older siblings—Roberto, Luisa, Maria and Miguel—and absolutely loved toy cars and planes, which were all over the place.

He got into everything, even the things she thought she had properly baby-proofed, giggling as she made exclamations of surprise at finding him crawling up the stairs, baby-gate still latched at the bottom. When she thought he was napping and she found him in the bathroom, toilet paper everywhere. One memorable time when they were visiting her dog-trainer brother-in-law and Lance disappeared, only for a frantic search to reveal that he was asleep in the dog bed inside a crate, the dog sitting at the entrance to the crate looking very displeased. The confused and terrified look he had on his face at the library, when the sliding glass doors closed in front of him, keeping him in the lobby while his mother loaded books into the stroller. She had thought she had told Roberto to keep an eye on Lance as she did this, but didn’t realize that she had only thought to say this when she heard the sound of small hands hitting the glass, not realizing that the magic doors would open if he moved back so the sensor could recognize his presence. The gleam he had in his eyes before bringing his hand down on the plate of spaghetti, splattering his sister so that the combination of her screaming and the red tomato sauce made her look and sound like a horror movie victim to the utter delight of the one year old.

She had worried when she and her husband brought Carlos home from the hospital. The older ones, now accustomed to having babies in the house, came over and oohed and aahed over their new baby brother. But Lance stayed away and cried, quickly swept up by one of his _Tías_ to be consoled. She knew there was a chance for jealousy in littler ones, so she wasn’t surprised, but just didn’t know how to fix it yet. However, once things had settled an hour or so later, she heard Carlos cry from his bassinet in his parents’ room, where he had been sleeping. She rushed to see what was going on, only to find Lance standing beside the bassinet, a toy car in his hand and a small pile of them at his feet.

“ _Mamí_ , _bebe_ cry.” He informed her seriously, giving her a look that said she should do something to fix it. When she went to scoop up the baby, she saw that there was a small pile of chunky toy cars also inside the bassinet.

After that, there hadn’t seemed to be any more instances of jealousy. It had lasted just long enough to turn into a realization that Lance had a new playmate.

There hadn’t even been any jealousy when Alicia was born, just a demand to hold the baby, arms outstretched, initially misinterpreted as a sign of wanting to be held, squirming out of his grandfather’s arms while saying, “I wanna turn, I wanna turn!” and a pout that quickly turned into a smile when it was finally his turn to hold Alicia.

The only problem after that had been when it came to naptimes. At the age of four, Lance was a constantly moving, constantly noise-making child, and didn’t deal well with being told to play quietly so that his toddler brother and baby sister could nap. He wanted to play with his space-ship with all the sound effects a preschooler could make, and refused to play quietly. Frustrated by a series of mishaps that day that included an entire jar of baby food splattered in the already messy kitchen, she had sent him to his room and confiscated the space-ship, with an order to be quiet.

Half an hour later, the kitchen was finally clean and she was regretting acting in anger and knew she should apologize to Lance.

But before she could go upstairs, the phone rang.

It was Widow Johnson, who lived at the end of the road, a sweet older woman who always gave the kids candy when she saw them and sometimes baby-sat.

Apparently, Lance showed up at her house less than five minutes before, sobbing that he missed his _Mamí_. She had seated him in her kitchen and given him a cookie while she called his mother.

She about flew out of the house with barely a moment to spare to tell Roberto, Luisa and Maria to watch the littler kids, that she’d be right back.

She had immediately gotten hugged tightly around the legs when she arrived at Widow Johnson’s.

“ _Lo siento_ , _Mamí_ , I shouldn’t have run away, I missed you…” Lance said through tears and snot, still clutching an uneaten cookie in his fist.

She carried him home, kissing him while cursing herself for not paying better attention as she had stewed in her own anger.

“So, you got to the end of the street and realized you missed me and home, huh?” She asked, brushing her fingers through Lance’s dark brown hair. He sniffled and nodded.

“But also,” He said, rubbing at his eye with his fist. “I’m not allowed to cross the street…”

She smiled at that and held him for a very long time after that.

That was how she knew not to believe the uniformed men.

Her baby wouldn’t just run away. He may have been old enough to cross the streets, to go across the country to attend the world’s most elite school, but he would never have run away.

He’d miss his mother too much.

After that incident, she tried hard to keep a better eye on Lance. It was difficult, because he moved so much. But he always came back to her, all scraped up from whatever misadventure with teary eyes and requests for _besos_. 

It was when he started school that other problems began. She and her husband were constantly getting notices that Lance was getting put in time-outs for not sitting still during story time, getting up and moving, or for talking a lot, or that he wasn’t finishing his work like the other kids. It only got worse as he moved up to first grade. Even at home, working on homework with _Mamí_ or _Papí_ or one of his older siblings, it usually resulted in tears and no playtime because the work wasn’t being finished. He seemed to understand the material, he just couldn’t focus on the worksheets, even if it was just a page or two.

Finally, at the suggestion of the school counselor, one morning she and her husband took him to see a child psychologist who specialized in learning disabilities.

The diagnosis was ADHD, and a prescription was immediately handed over.

She was a registered nurse and midwife, but yet there was something about this prescription and medication that made her uneasy.

She wasn’t sure if it was the association of medicine usually tasting bad, but it seemed that Lance shared her uneasiness and it was a struggle to get him to take the pills every morning.

It was less than a week when she woke up suddenly in the middle of the night with a hand on her shoulder, making her jump slightly.

“Lance, it’s late, you have school in the morning…” She said, glancing at the alarm clock.

“I can’t sleep.” He said, which she thought was a little unusual for him, but told him to climb into the bed between her and his father anyway.

But when she woke up again in the morning, she saw how tired Lance was beside her, still awake. She thought it was just a restless night. Then it became an almost nightly pattern, sometimes resulting in Lance sleeping and sometimes not. The nights he slept, he usually had a headache sometime during the day, coming home in tears and just wanting to curl up against his mother or lie down in his room, not even wanting to play. She felt her heart break and her mind scream when the teacher sent home a note the end of the first month on the medications, saying that Lance had calmed down considerably since starting the meds, which she saw as “improvement”.

“It’s because he can’t sleep!” She had said through tears when she showed her husband the note. “You can’t run around if you are exhausted! And when he sleeps, his head hurts!”

She didn’t give him the pill the next morning and called the child psychologist as soon as the office opened. She wanted her happy, healthy baby back.

The next two years were trials of various prescriptions, each one with the side effects seeming to out-weigh the intended effects. Loss of appetite, irritability, delayed growth, fatigue… She always let him not take the meds during school breaks or for special occasions, even though the doctor told her (slowly, always enunciating carefully, apparently thinking that her Hispanic name and her husband’s naturally tanned skin meant that they couldn’t speak English) not to do that. But she did, and she was always happy to see the real Lance return every summer, happy to swim like a fish in the ocean and play with his siblings and cousins, running around playing soccer and baseball and spending nights watching the stars. He ate anything you put in front of him, he woke well-rested, and he shot up like a weed. He was loud, and bouncy, and into just about everything, but happy and healthy.

Finally, they found a medicine that worked with minimal side effects, which made her breathe a sigh of relief as they passed the six month mark on the same prescription. However, he always looked for ways to get out of taking his meds, though, something she learned the hard way.

Technically, it worked really easily for him. In a house with eight kids, everyone got sick, one right after another.

So, one morning, when Alicia started complaining that her tummy hurt, and then almost immediately threw up, she knew she was going to be in for a long week and a half minimum. She hadn’t thought twice when Lance said that his stomach ached, too, and sent him to lie down, keeping him out of school.

By the time that Alicia was feeling better, Carlos and baby Raymon got the same stomach bug. And then Luisa and Maria, then Miguel, then Roberto, then her husband, and finally herself.

It was that day that she got the stomach bug that she realized that—even though Lance was still complaining of his own stomachache—he wasn’t as lethargic as the other kids had been, bringing her water and other things.

She woke up suddenly from her nap later and thought for a moment. Really thought.

“Lance?” She called.

“ _Sí_ , _Mamí_?” Lance said, coming to the door of her bedroom. Running, she noticed…

“Lance,” She said again. “Come here.”

He climbed on the bed beside her, looking at her curiously.

“Lance,” She said, dreading to find out the answer. “Has your tummy really been hurting?”

She caught the brief panicked look in his face as he said, “Yes… It hurts a lot…”

“For over two weeks?”

“Um… Yeah?” He said, eyes shifting away.

She took a deep breath, closing her eyes. She knew he was lying. He couldn’t lie to her. None of the kids could; if she had done one thing right as a parent, it was that she raised horrible liars.

“I’m going to ask you one more time, and this time, I want you to tell me the truth.” She said. “Have you been faking this whole time?”

She got a sheepish nod as a response.

She groaned and put her head in her hands. Two weeks. He had missed two entire weeks of third grade, for a non-existent stomachache in the midst of a very real stomach bug virus going around the house. She took away his dessert privileges for twice that long as punishment, which was wisely accepted without complaint.

She still wasn’t sure how he hadn’t actually caught the stomach bug in that time.

She was, on the other hand, sure that her son’s namesake was currently laughing his butt off in Heaven.

Great. Instead of naming her child after a Saint like normal Catholic mothers, therefore ensuring a patron saint, she just had to give her son a name with a mischievous corresponding guardian angel.

It wasn’t until the next summer, though, that she was incredibly grateful for that guardian angel.

There was a family picnic at her sister-in-law’s. Everyone was there, the kids were playing. Some of the bigger kids were in the tree house, which was actually just more of a platform in a tree, lacking walls.

She remembered sitting in a chair, hand over her belly, discussing names with her sister-in-law. She didn’t see what happened, only heard the screaming and felt her heart stop when she turned around to see Lance lying flat on the ground, very still, his father and two of his uncles immediately beside him telling him not to move.

Shaking, Roberto had explained what happened. One of the slightly younger kids had come up onto the tree-platform as well, but had lost her balance near the edge. Being the closest one, Lance saw her begin to fall, but instead of grabbing for her hands, he had tried to grab her entirely in mid-air, sending him falling as well. He had grabbed hold of his cousin and pulled her to him, hitting the ground first with her on top of him.

She rushed to her son’s side, kneeling in the grass, grasping Lance’s hand and brushing grass out of his hair as he looked up at her with wide, terrified eyes while one of his aunts called an ambulance. Then, to her utter surprise, he giggled in spite of the tears that were welling up in his eyes.

“Lance needs an ambulance…” He said in a sing-song tone that made her blood freeze.

The EMTs had arrived and worked quickly but carefully, putting a brace around his neck and a board under his spine. She was determined to not let go of her son’s hand, finally only reluctantly doing so in order for the radiologists to take X-rays. She cried and paced and prayed and cried some more in the waiting area.

Half an hour later, she broke down into tears—relieved, happy tears this time—as the doctors shook their heads at the miracle that was not a single broken bone in Lance’s small body, even when another small body landed on top of his own. Not even a concussion… They kept him overnight, just a precaution and Lance was already over whatever fear he had had between the fall, the ambulance ride and all of the scans and needles, and was much more interested in the array of Jell-O colors he was allowed to choose from, and showing his siblings the cool rocket sticker one of the nurses had given him and the small stuffed bear that one of the X-ray technicians had given him to hold during the scans.

“Not that I was scared,” Lance assured Maria and Luisa, who hugged him tightly while crying.

 _Well, that makes one of us,_ She remembered thinking as she leaned against her husband, completely drained. It wasn’t until the rest of the family had left and it was time to sleep that he shyly suggested that she sleep in the bed with him, because he didn’t think the chair was comfy enough for her or the baby. She wrapped her arms around him.

“You were very brave,” She whispered to him, kissing his hair.

“The nice X-ray dude said I was,” Lance said with a yawn.

“Before that. You saved Lexi when she fell…” She said. She glanced down at her son pressed up against her, his arm still wrapped tightly around the teddy bear. “How did you know? That you needed to protect her? How did you know to move so fast?”

But he was already asleep, snoring softly.

She laid awake for a long time after that.

Two years after that, three months into Lance’s first year of middle school, he shyly, nervously, asked for a chance to speak with his parents alone. They obliged, meeting with Lance in their room.

They weren’t expecting the slide-show presentation he had put together on Roberto’s laptop, trying to convince his parents to let him stop taking his ADHD medications.

On one hand, she was very impressed at all the research he had done in his own free time for things that would help in place of the meds: getting a wider array of fidget toys, practicing yoga, cutting sugar and some other things out of his diet.

“I know you have never liked the pills, _mi hijo_ ,” His father had said. “But why now?”

Lance had bit his lip, then said, “At the beginning of the school year, they let us do the simulator tests. For Galaxy Garrison.”

His parents nodded, remembering. It was a requirement for all incoming sixth graders around the world, in order to give them enough time to prepare to apply to the Garrison if they chose to.

Lance’s simulator had to be scheduled for first thing on a Monday morning, after an entire weekend without medications, as they were considered stimulants and by law were banned substances for both regular pilots and Garrison pilots. Once he was done, he was supposed to take his medication and go to class as usual.

His results, according to the recruitment officer, showed great promise for the pilot program.

“You want to apply?” She asked, heart twisting in her chest, glancing over to see that her husband was experiencing the same thoughts she was.

Their son’s namesake was a commercial pilot. He loved flying.

They had never told their son this fact.

But, yet, they weren’t surprised. The obsession with rocket ships and airplanes, and later pouring over books about space and pointing out constellations in the sky. The constant need to go and do and move… The signs had always been there. They couldn’t deny it.

Lance nodded. He wanted to go, he wanted to fly, he wanted to go to space. But in order to do that, he couldn’t be reliant on any ADHD medications at the Garrison. He would have to find a way to manage his ADHD without it, and he wanted to start now.

She thought of all the years of the side effects that he hated. Of how happy he was during those summers and Christmas breaks.

And this… This was his dream, and he was approaching it very maturely. After all, what nearly twelve year old did this much research and put it into a power-point presentation in order to sway his parents?

They made a deal: he could stay off the medication as long as he could keep his grades up and out of trouble.

He made the honor roll that first quarter, proudly showing his parents the paper stating this. In addition to a lot of studying for the practical portion of the Garrison entrance exam, he also knew he needed to pass the physical exam portion, and ended up joining the swim team at the community center, somehow balancing being an honor roll student and a medal-winning swimmer, and still baby-sitting and finding time for some of his favorite hobbies and time with friends and family. Not to mention the occasional girlfriend. And definitely the usual mischief, being the ringleader among the siblings for pranks in the house.

She knew it was hard for him, but she was proud. He came to her at least once a week, sprawled out on her bed while she folded laundry, sometimes venting, sometimes sharing, sometimes questioning. How frustrated and sad he was when he didn’t make the honor roll one quarter and was so certain that was the end of his dreams. How he worried that this new kid was going to replace him on the swim team. It was only in those moments, laying on his stomach while matching together pairs of socks, that she saw his usual confidence and pride drop. She felt honored that he would show that to her, not anyone else.

Three months before he graduated middle school, she took Lance to the local community college where other eighth-graders were going to spend the entire day doing simulator and written exams and an obstacle course. When she picked him up, he was exhausted but happy.

She watched as he eagerly checked the mailbox and his e-mail and spent Saturdays frantically knitting—a skill his grandmother had taught him in hopes of keeping him still the summer he was eleven and sprained his ankle—as he waited to hear the mail truck arrive.

And then, finally, the envelope came bearing the Garrison seal. When she pulled it out of the mailbox, she stared at it for a long time, heart pounding in her chest.

She dropped everything in order to make Lance’s favorite cake, a rare treat. She knew it would either be eaten in celebration or consolation.

Suddenly, she was very torn as to which she would have preferred.

The entire family sat at the dinner table, all eyes on Lance as he tore into the envelope.

And then, there was that grin.

“I’m in!” He shouted, throwing a fist into the air in celebration. “I’m going to the Garrison! I’m going to be a pilot!”

She cried as she hugged her son.

She was so proud. But also so scared and heartbroken.

Roberto was already in his second year of college, the twins in their freshman year. She didn’t expect to be short another child in the house so soon…

The orange, black and white uniform and black boots arrived in the mail shortly after, along with packing lists and an itinerary of courses. Letters for the parents, with rules about care packages and mailing addresses and schedule of breaks and transferring medical forms and school transcripts. Airfare was provided for the student only, one-way tickets provided at the beginning and end of the school year, with round-trip tickets for a three-week Christmas break.

She sat on his bed, watching him pack and talk about how excited he was.

She watched as some of that excitement waned at the airport, his carry-on bag slung over his shoulder, trying to smile and hold back tears as everyone got final hugs. She held her son in her arms and kissed him.

“You are destined to do something great,” She whispered into his ear. “I know it.”

She didn’t let herself cry until Lance was out of sight, the boy looking back occasionally to give another wave or blow a kiss.

She watched as a piece of her heart took to the air shortly after that.

The call came hours later, that he had landed safely and was getting settled into his dorm, and he had a fantastic roommate who was a sweet boy named Hunk who was an engineer and all of the excitement was back in his voice.

The calls in the weeks that followed were about various happenings. One day, he saw Shiro, “the Shiro, Mom!”, a famous and talented upper-classman who was about to pilot on an important mission, and it was clear that Lance idolized. There was a boy named Keith whom he ranted about, how the boy got such high scores on the simulators and never really seemed to work hard.

She remembered the silence that was on the phone when she picked up on the first day of his second year, when he began his specified pilot training.

“They put me in cargo class, _Mamí_ …” He said softly, sounding so brokenhearted. “I thought I did really well, good enough for fighter class… I worked so hard…”

She did what moms did best. She consoled, and talked him through the frustration he felt, gave him encouragement and love and support, the conversation ending with him being determined to up his ranking, to be reconsidered for the following semester.

She didn’t want to tell him that she hoped that he stayed in cargo class. Reading over the material the Garrison provided, she realized cargo class pilots had more frequent but shorter assignments compared to fighter class, with infrequent but long-term assignments. He could stay home more on earth as a cargo pilot. There was even a Garrison cargo station in Florida, close to their American home, so he could be stationed there.

She was even more grateful that Lance was cargo class when everyone remained glued to the television and the announcement that the entire Kerberos crew was lost. She remembered falling onto the sofa, clutching the armrest with white knuckles as the words flashed across the screen.

Pilot error.

But at the same time, she couldn’t let herself be brokenhearted and scared just less than a year later, when he made another first-day call, excited.

Fighter class. He made fighter class.

He was so happy, she couldn’t be sad.

He still had years of training left, after all. He wasn’t going anywhere.

And then… he was gone. Disappeared without a trace.

But she knew her son.

She knew that, wherever he was, he was going to come back.

He always came back.

She formed a friendship over those long months with Colleen Holt, the wife of the Commander of the Kerberos mission and mother of the mission’s communications specialist, as well as another Garrison cadet who disappeared the same night Lance did. She formed friendships with the mother of her son’s roommate, also missing, and the mother of the Kerberos pilot—who miraculously returned from the dead, crashing to Earth the same night Lance, Hunk and Pidge were unaccounted for.

It helped, but only somewhat. It did nothing to remove the ache from her heart, did nothing to break the silence that had fallen over the house, did nothing to quell the angry outbursts from the other children who were just as sad and scared as she was, didn’t stop the nightmares and the tears.

And then, the call came in. Secret Service agents—sent by the President of the United States himself—were dispatched to her home, to escort her family to Nevada of all places.

From the airport, they were loaded into limos—which delighted her younger four children, who actually managed to sleep on the plane ride—and driven towards the Garrison, passing the building towards a wide open space of desert, where a large spaceship sat, surrounded by five of what she could only describe as humongous mechanical cats, tails sweeping in the dust behind them.

There was a blue cat, whose tail thumped the ground once, shaking everything around the area slightly.

There was someone tall—someone human, she realized—dressed in blue, gray and white, standing between the blue lion and a red one, speaking to someone dressed in red.

The person in blue turned towards the group of newcomers.

She felt her heart jump to her throat as that person grinned, dropping the blue helmet in his hand to the ground, running at full speed towards them.

Towards her.

He had been taller than her when he left for school the previous fall, and now was even taller, his hair a little shaggier. There was a scar that cut through the right side of his upper lip.

But the blue eyes were the same. The smile was still the same.

His arms around her… His hugs were still the same.

“I missed you, _Mamí_ ,” He whispered, hugging her tightly, she holding on tightly to him despite the hard, bulky armor that encased his body. “I’ve been wanting one of these hugs for a long time now…”

And she cried as she held on tight to her son, cupping his face in her hands, peppering him with _besos_ , his siblings and father joining in the reunion, everyone demanding to know where he had been and what was he wearing and what was up with the spaceships and cats.

She laughed in disbelief at the explanation.

Her son, a Paladin of Voltron, a Defender of the Universe, pilot of the Blue Lion.

Her son was a hero, brave and selfless.

He was destined for finding trouble, and for trouble finding him.

He was destined for greatness.

She smiled, larger than she had ever before.

And she spared a brief moment to look around at the other people present. And she spotted the officer who had showed up at her doorstep months before.

Her smile turned smug.

She knew all along that her baby hadn’t run away.

Just like she knew all along that he would come back to her.

He always did.

His guardian angel and namesake ensured that.

And she was forever grateful.

**Author's Note:**

> So I love the "Lance has ADHD" headcanon, and all the other headcanons I see are "Oh, Lance is in space without his meds" but then (because I'm a nerdy reference-librarian-in-training) I did research about pilots with ADHD currently and in particular ADHD meds being used while piloting; ADHD meds are considered stimulants by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and I would imagine that the Garrison would use the same or similar requirements for their pilots. So, I hc that Lance was off ADHD meds long before he actually got into space.
> 
> Translations  
> Besos: Kisses  
> Tía: Aunt  
> Mamí: Mom/Mommy  
> Bebe: Baby  
> Lo siento: I'm sorry  
> Papí: Dad/Daddy  
> Sí: Yes  
> Mi hijo: My son


End file.
